


lessons in trust

by nightswatch



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 15:36:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7177607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightswatch/pseuds/nightswatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't talk about what exactly they are, but Neil is more and more convinced that they're on a good way to becoming <i>something</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lessons in trust

**Author's Note:**

> I read all three Foxhole Court books this week and I couldn't help but write this. I've heard that there's extra content, which I haven't seen anything of so far, so if anything doesn't line up, you'll know why.

When Neil wakes up, his hand is only inches from Andrew’s. He knows better than to reach out; he hasn’t forgotten what happened only two days ago when an accidental brush of his fingers had him waking up with Andrew’s elbow painfully stabbing into his ribs. 

He brought that on himself. Neil is a light sleeper, but by now he’s so used to sleeping in his dorm bed on his own that he doesn’t usually calculate for someone sleeping next to him. He could sleep on the couch, but if he is honest, just for a moment, he has to admit that he likes waking up like this, with Andrew right there next to him, his features soft, still fast asleep. 

They came to Columbia after they’d dropped Nicky off at the airport for his flight to Germany, with Aaron and Kevin on the backseat. They’ll be coming and going. Aaron and Kevin have made plans to go see their girlfriends, although neither of them has mentioned it in so many words.Neil doesn’t have anywhere to go. He has nowhere to be. It still comes a surprise sometimes that he can, simply, stay. 

Before long, Kevin will drag him back to the Court, even before summer practices start, and Neil won’t mind going in the slightest. He already misses the game, even though everyone on the team agreed that they all deserve a break.

That is why, for now, he can stay in bed, stay in Columbia, just stay. 

Andrew’s brow furrows in his sleep, but it quickly smoothes out again. Neil isn’t sure if he should be looking, but if he slips out of bed now, he’ll wake him. Andrew is a light sleeper, too. Some part of him is always on high alert, always ready to pounce. 

Neil isn’t sure how much time has passed when Andrew’s eyelids flutter and he stares at Neil. “Don’t look at me like that,” he mutters. His eyes wander to Neil’s hand, still dangerously close to Andrew’s. His fingers curl around Neil’s wrist and for a moment Neil is convinced that he’s going to push his hand further away, but in the end Andrew only says, “Go back to sleep.” 

His fingers remain where they are. Neil doesn’t go back to sleep.

It feels like a step forward, but Neil can’t tell where it is that they’re going just yet. Every time Neil uses the word _this_ when he refers to them, Andrew gives him a look that says something like _by now you should know better than to call it a_ this. Sometimes he throws an _I hate you_ in there for good measure. And yet Neil can’t push away the feeling that it’s still a step in an undeterminable direction. 

On some days they stagnate. On other days they even take a step back. Andrew won’t talk about it, but ever since they’ve come to Columbia, Neil keeps catching Andrew looking at him, like he’s about to say something. He never does and Neil doesn’t ask any questions. 

Neil doesn’t mind waiting. He doesn’t mind spending the morning staring at Andrew’s fingers, loosely curled around his wrist. He likes the feeling of it and if this is all they’ll ever be, Neil can’t say that he’d mind. He never thought that he’d have anything like this at all. 

Andrew lets go of him eventually and Neil slips out of the house to go on a run before Kevin can rope him into watching recorded games with him all day. It’s still part of him, the running, although he never runs far. 

It’s only been a few days since their break has stared and Neil already isn’t sure what to with himself all day. When he comes back, the car is gone and so is Kevin. Andrew is still there and he doesn’t look too happy about it; Aaron has also emerged from his room and doesn’t look too happy about his general situation. 

“We’re going out tonight,” Andrew calls to Neil before he pads up the stairs to take a shower.

Andrew catches up with him at the bathroom door. He’s still in his pyjamas. Neil knows that look on Andrew’s face.

“Yes,” Neil says before Andrew can even open his mouth. He’s come to expect the question and he doesn’t tell Andrew that he’ll always say _yes_ to him. Not anymore. It has become a vital part of how they work. As long as Andrew needs to hear him say it, Neil will say it. 

Andrew accepts his answer without a response of his own and leans in to kiss him instead, pressing him against the frame of the door. Neil’s hands go into Andrew’s hair on their own accord. He goes all too willingly when Andrew tugs him into the bathroom. 

*

The next day he finds Andrew on the balcony, a cigarette between his fingers. The sun has turned Andrew’s hair golden. 

Neil has spent most of his day trying to stay still for longer than five minutes and has come to the conclusion that staying still with nothing to do in sight is not something he’s capable of. Earlier he found himself studying the cookbooks lined up on a shelf in the kitchen. Aaron snorted at him and Neil quickly abandoned them in favour of finding Andrew. 

Sitting down next to Andrew, Neil plucks the cigarette from his fingers, watching the smoke curl in the air while Andrew lights another. 

Most of the time, Neil lets Andrew come to him, but he finds himself wanting to reach out to him often enough. He wants to ask Andrew if he can, but Andrew has never been much of a talker, so Neil lifts his hand, slowly, his eyes on Andrew all the while. He waits until Andrew has considered his hand, inches from his head, waits until Andrew has nodded, curtly, before he threads his fingers into Andrew’s hair. 

Andrew must have expected Neil to pull him in for a kiss and gives him a confused look when he doesn’t. Neil keeps his hand where it is, though, gauging Andrew’s reaction. He doesn’t tug, barely moves. Andrew’s hair is soft between his fingers, but Andrew’s eyes are sharp.

“That okay?” Neil asks. 

“Fine,” Andrew says after a moment. 

It’s almost unnoticeable how Andrew shifts closer as he stubs out his cigarette, how he tilts his head a moment later. 

“Are you going to do something?” Andrew asks, impatient. 

“What do you want me to do?”

Andrew only grunts in reply, but keeps his head tilted towards Neil, who keeps dragging his thumb across Andrew’s scalp in small circles. Eventually, Andrew closes his eyes. 

Neil has been thinking about asking him if he’s talked to Betsy about this. _This_ again. He’d feel better if he had a list of things he’s allowed to do, but in reality such a list couldn’t be put together. The boundaries change daily and on a different day Andrew might have not let him do this. On a different day, he might have not trusted Neil enough to close his eyes. 

Andrew shifts again and pulls his legs against his chest. He glances at Neil, but this time Neil can’t even guess what the look on his face means. 

“Do you want me to stop?” Neil asks. 

“No, don’t,” Andrew says lightly. Something foreign has snuck into his voice and Neil starts to suspect that Andrew might actually be enjoying this. 

Neil tries not to smile too much about it. 

*

Neil is almost relieved when Kevin insists on going back to Palmetto the following Monday. They crash at Abby’s for a few days and Andrew begs off to visit Betsy while Aaron begs off for undisclosed reasons. Neil assumes that he’s taking the chance to be far, far away from them for a couple of hours. 

They have dinner with Coach and Abby on Thursday and are on their way back to Columbia on Friday afternoon. Later, Neil drives them to Eden’s Twilight.

It seems that Kevin is delighted that he’s staying in Nicky’s room when they get back in the middle of the night because he doesn’t have to make his way all the way up the stairs. Aaron pulls himself up by the banister ahead of Andrew and Neil and stumbles into his room, not bothering to close the door.

Neil follows Andrew and lets himself fall onto Andrew’s bed with a low groan. The door clicks shut and shoes hit the floor. It’s late, or early, depending on how you look at it. Even though Neil dutifully stuck to his sodas in the course of the night, he feels like it will take him a maximum of five seconds to fall asleep. Getting undressed isn’t part of the plan. 

He’s barely closed his eyes when the mattress shakes and Andrew looms over him. Neil opens his eyes and blinks up at Andrew’s face, mostly hidden in the shadows. Andrew leans down, waits a moment, then his nose bumps against Neil’s. “Yes or no?”

“You’re drunk,” Neil says, even though that’s a bit of a stretch. Andrew wasn’t stumbling, he isn’t slurring his speech, actually he sounds just like he always does, but Neil has lost count of the empty glasses he carried back to Roland, has lost count of the amount of shots Andrew went through at Eden’s Twilight. He can still smell them on his breath. 

“Is that a no?” Andrew asks.

Neil swallows hard. He’s not sure what it is. Just a feeling that now is not a good time. “That’s a no,” Neil finally says. 

Andrew rolls off of him without another word and kicks off his pants before he turns over, away from Neil. Feeling more awake than before, Neil pulls off his shoes and gets rid of his own clothes and yanks the covers out from under Andrew, who’s only vaguely cooperative. 

“Andrew, I didn’t…” Neil isn’t a hundred percent sure where he’s going with this. He knows better than to think Andrew is angry. He’s being Andrew and Neil should just go with it.

“I know,” Andrew says. He turns over again to face Neil.

It’s hard to make out his features in the darkness of the room. “I know you wouldn’t ask if you didn’t want to, but–”

“I didn’t ask you to explain,” Andrew says. “You don’t _need_ to explain.”

It takes a moment for Neil to realize what he means. It’s not that Andrew doesn’t care for his explanation, it’s that an explanation is unnecessary. A _no_ is a _no_ and that’s the end of it and Neil will never have to explain himself for not saying _yes_.

Neil yanks at the covers again and pulls them over himself and Andrew, careful not to touch him. 

He’s convinced that Andrew has fallen asleep, but then he suddenly says, “That’s why I keep asking.” Andrew shifts and the bedsheets rustle. “I know what you’re saying when you say you’ll always say yes. I know that in some way you mean it. But you didn’t say yes just now.”

“Andrew–”

“I’m done talking about this,” Andrew says. 

Neil doesn’t reply. The fact that Andrew talked about it at all was more than enough to throw him. A few months ago he had to trade truths for this sort of honesty. 

This really is going somewhere. And _this_ really is something.

*

The next two days feel like they’re walking backwards. Andrew is distant and snarls at him and Neil is smart enough not to ask any questions. This has nothing to do with that _no_. It has everything to do with Andrew opening up for two more seconds than he usually does. 

It’s Sunday night when Neil is woken up by Andrew jerking next to him in his sleep like he does when someone touches him to wake him. Luckily, Neil is on the other end of the mattress, but it still shakes him awake. 

“Andrew?” Neil mutters, rubbing his eyes. He reaches out to switch on his bedside lamp and the shadows in Andrew’s room flicker into nonexistence. It’s just shy of 3 AM. 

Andrew is lying on his back, eyes screwed shut. His breathing is an unsteady thing right now; his fist is clenched in the sheets. He sucks in a ragged breath. “Turn off the light and go back to sleep.”

Neil sits up instead. He won’t go back to sleep until Andrew does. 

“Why are you like this?” Andrew asks, but he clearly doesn’t expect an answer and Neil won’t give him one. 

Andrew sighs and sits up as well. When Neil makes a move to reach out, Andrew shakes his head. “Don’t.” He hops out of bed and fishes his cigarettes out of the pockets of his pants, lying discarded on the floor. “Go back to sleep,” he says again and goes outside.

Neil turns off the light, but he doesn’t go back to sleep. He watches the orange glow of the cigarette become a little brighter every time Andrew takes a drag, then he watches as Andrew stubs it out and remains sitting on the balcony in complete darkness for a few more minutes before he comes inside and climbs back into bed.

“Still awake?” Andrew asks. He smells like cigarette smoke and night air.

Neil hums.

“Go to sleep,” Andrew says one more time.

This time, Neil doesn’t fight it and closes his eyes. 

*

On Monday morning, Neil wakes up with Andrew still in bed with him and with Andrew’s eyes on him, wide awake. Neil isn’t sure what he was expecting. On Saturday and Sunday morning Andrew was already gone when Neil woke up. Now Andrew is looking at him like he’s searching for an answer that Neil isn’t able to give him, like Neil is a frustrating thing that he doesn’t understand. 

Andrew doesn’t say that he hates him, but it’s somewhere in the air between them. 

Neil almost wants to ask him if he’s all right. In the end, he just stares back at Andrew, waiting for him to say something or do something. When he doesn’t, Neil untucks his hand from the covers and slowly moves it closer to the top of Andrew’s head.

It’s where he’s allowed to touch and he hasn’t forgotten the evening on the balcony when Andrew didn’t want him to stop. 

“Not now,” Andrew says. There’s no sharp edge to it today. It’s not uttered with as much ferocity as the _don’t_ last night. 

Neil’s hand ends up between them on the pillow. 

Eyes flickering from Neil’s hand back to his face, Andrew says, “I…” He trails off and shakes his head.

Neil waits. If he pushes now, he may never get to hear the end of that sentence. But the same thing might happen if he doesn’t push. It’s a fickle thing, whatever this is. 

“I want to…”

And whatever this is, it’s not an easy thing to say. 

“Yes,” Neil says, “to whatever you want.” It’s not quite a push, but it’s a nudge. 

Andrew looks at him for a long moment then he moves closer until he’s pressed against Neil. He puts his head down on Neil’s shoulder, his entire body tense like he’s fighting not to run away. Breath tickling Neil’s neck, Andrew takes a deep breath and reaches for Neil’s hand, holding it so tightly that Neil wonders if Andrew wants to make sure that it won’t go anywhere else. 

Neil can feel him relax, gradually, until Andrew is curled around him like he actually wants to be there, his fingers still wrapped around Neil’s, but not nearly as tightly as before. Neil does his best not to move. He never expected that he would have this, but now that he has it, he’d be loath to lose it. 

He’s had Andrew this close before, but it’s not the same. They both know that it’s not the same. There’s no end to this. They could lie here, just like this, for an hour, for two hours, without so much as moving a finger. There’s no need behind this, no urgency. This is Andrew letting his guard down, just a little bit. This a step further. More importantly, it’s a step in a direction that Andrew never acknowledged they were headed in.

Andrew’s thumb rubs over the back of Neil’s hand. “Now,” he says. “Now you can.”

It takes Neil a second to catch on. He was too busy not moving to immediately understand this request to get on with what he tried to do earlier. Neil’s other arm is securely trapped under Andrew, but he wrestles it free in favour of burying his fingers in Andrew’s hair. 

A soft sigh escapes Andrew’s lips and it sounds like defeat.

*

It’s hard to tell when Andrew will feel like curling against him. There’s days when he’s as distant as ever, on other days he kisses Neil breathless and then burrows against him, uncharacteristically mellow. His moods change like the weather and Neil does his best to keep up. 

Before he falls asleep, Andrew always pulls away. It’s for both their benefits. If Andrew woke up with Neil’s hand still tangled in his hair, it might end with an unpleasant awakening for Andrew and with extensive injuries for Neil.

It’s the night before they go back to Palmetto for summer practices when Andrew has him pinned against the wall, his teeth grazing Neil’s bottom lip, Neil’s body shaking from head to toe when Andrew’s hands slip under his shirt. Andrew’s palms are almost burning his skin and Neil needs him close so much that he can barely breathe. It’s then that Andrew stills against him, his breaths coming quickly, his lips still just a minuscule tilt of the head away from Neil’s.

“Ask me,” Andrew says.

For a moment, Neil is convinced that he misheard. “What?”

“You’re not deaf, are you?” Andrew says, irritated. “I said, ask me.”

Neil knows what he means but he doesn’t know why here and why now, he doesn’t know what brought this on and he doesn’t know if they’ll be okay if he does ask. He hesitates, searching Andrew’s face for answers, and finds nothing but stoic defiance.

Andrew reaches up and tugs at Neil’s wrists to get him to move his hands. When he does, Andrew keeps them between his fingers, thumbs dragging over marred skin, watching Neil expectantly. 

Neil knows where they’re headed. He’s known it ever since this has started, but until now he wasn’t sure if they’d ever make it there. He still isn’t and he won’t be until they get there, but they’re about to take another step. 

“Yes or no?” Neil whispers into the silence.

“Yes,” Andrew says. He takes Neil’s hands and guides them to his hips. “There.” He kisses him, hard. “Right there is good.”

“Just say the word if you want me to–”

“I know,” Andrew says. “I know that you’ll stop. You are not the problem. Not knowing where your hands might end up is.”

“Then I won’t move them.”

“I thought you were smart.” Andrew tugs at the collar of Neil’s shirt. “What if, one of these days, I want you to move them?”

Neil rests his forehead against Andrew’s. “Then we’ll take it one step at a time.”

“I knew this would get messy,” Andrew says. His fingers wrap around the back of Neil’s head to pull him into another kiss. He doesn’t let him go for a while.

Neil keeps his hands exactly where Andrew put them, fingers clenched in his shirt. Now that he doesn’t have them in Andrew’s hair anymore it’s much easier to press a kiss to Andrew’s jaw, to move down to his neck and feel Andrew shudder. 

“I have a question,” Neil mutters against Andrew’s skin.

“What else could you possibly want to know?”

What’s another step when they’ve taken so many already? Neil plants another soft kiss on Andrew’s neck and asks, “Is this a _this_ now? Because I clearly remember you saying _this_.”

Andrew pushes against him a little harder. “I don’t think I did.”

“So it’s not a _this_?” Neil asks. Andrew doesn’t have his knives on him right now, but Neil will end up with a fist in his jaw if he doesn’t stop pushing it soon. And yet Andrew hasn’t told him to stop and that’s the whole point of this. 

“I hate you,” Andrew says, with feeling. “So much.”

“I know,” Neil says. “That’s not an answer, though.”

“I’m well aware.” Andrew tugs Neil away from his neck by his hair and kisses him. 

“You’re stalling,” Neil says between kisses. 

“And you’re nearing two hundred percent.” 

Another kiss, harsh and bruising. It’s all teeth and fingernails biting into skin. 

Neil pulls away to catch his breath. He feels like he’s been running, except that running has never felt this good. “Yes or no?” he asks.

The look on Andrew’s face is murderous. Neil is probably nearing five hundred percent right now, but he’s perfectly fine with that if there’s a chance that he’ll end up getting an honest answer. 

Andrew’s fingers twitch at the back of Neil’s neck. “Call it what you want.”

Neil lets out a puff of breath. Well, it’s something. Andrew’s lips are too close and too inviting to turn this into a debate. He’ll get an answer soon enough, he just needs to have a little patience. 

Andrew leans back against him, but instead of kissing him, he buries his head in the crook of Neil’s neck and quietly says, “Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are very much appreciated :)


End file.
